I’ll let you in on a little secret

March 25, 2013

This weekend’s convention was pretty stellar, at least as Motobushido game play is concerned. The “pretty much final” version of the rules was tested in full, and stood pretty damn solidly. But there’s one cool thing that I really want to take a moment and talk about. Towards the end of one of the sessions, a player said to me something that I’d never really quantified in words, but had been otherwise trying to get across in different manners since the early days of this game.

To paraphrase him: “Motobushido is a game that has both motorcycles and samurai in it, but isn’t at all about either one of those two things.”

This is something of a secret, and totally true. While there are samurai mechanics, and motorcycle mechanics, and samurai fights on the backs of motorcycles, the true core of the game boils down to a sentence which involves neither: Motobushido is a game about brotherhood, reputation, and fatalistic action. Motobushido is a game about not discovering your own limits until after you’ve pushed them too far.

In pretty much every game I run, once the players finally grasp the mechanic (which – not to toot my horn here – is completely different from anything they’ve ever played before), their faces always show this “Ohhhhhhhh I get it” moment when they realize the truth of the game’s focus. And for me, that moment is always, always a wonderful thing to see in action.

Anyway, I’m spending this afternoon and evening mostly working on the final playtest draft. I had intended on releasing it today, but I’ve just got too much post-con administrivia to handle, so they’ll likely be up tomorrow, or Wednesday morning at the latest.